Theory and validation of the new features in BIEM solver HAMS-MREL

Abstract

To accelerate the energy transition, offshore renewable energy is increasingly moving toward array deployment. This shift demands accurate, reliable analysis of hydrodynamics and array interactions at low computational cost. Frequency-domain tools, especially those based on the Boundary Integral Equation Method (BIEM), have thus become widely adopted in the renewables community. Hydrodynamic Analysis of Marine Structures-Marine Renewable Energies Lab (HAMS-MREL) is a recently developed open-source multi-body BIEM solver that computes diffraction and radiation problems, yielding hydrodynamic coefficients and excitation forces on structures. The solver has been validated across a range of geometries using experiments, semi-analytical solutions, and cross-model comparisons, demonstrating high accuracy. This study extends HAMS-MREL with several new features—including wave field calculations (free-surface elevation and pressure), global symmetry, irregular frequency suppression, and generalized (dry) modes—all of which have been validated for accuracy and computational efficiency. OpenMP parallelization has been integrated into each feature, delivering significant computational speed-ups ranging from 13.5× to 47.2×.